(Business Week) The U.S. risks a deteriorating workforce unless it rapidly improves educational achievement for minority groups who soon will become a majority in the nation, researchers say.

“If we just do a snapshot of minority performance today and project that 20 years out, we’re going to have a poorly skilled workforce,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

Census Bureau data released yesterday show whites of European ancestry will soon bear less than half the nation’s new babies. Blacks, Asians, American Indians, Hispanics and other traditional minority groups had 2.07 million children in the 12 months ended July 1, or 48.6 percent of all births, an increase from 45 percent in 2005, the Census Bureau said.

For the period ending July 1, non-Hispanic whites had 2.19 million children, or 51.4 percent of all births compared with 55 percent four years earlier, Census figures showed.

While the educational performance of blacks and Hispanics has improved in recent decades, they continue on average to score about four grade levels below whites in the 12th grade, said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation in Washington.